There has been some debate amongst the British and American Left about the nature of the challenges to the old political establishment offered by Brexiters and Trump (‘Brexit plus, plus, plus’). Some have argued that these represent fightbacks. by the working class against the neoliberalism, albeit somewhat distorted. This blog has posted several articles which have argued that these Right populist challenges have been mounted by sections of the ruling class, not so openly compromised by the 2008 crash, in order to win wider ruling class support and launch a stepped up ruling class offensive. They have indeed successfully made appeals to sections of the working class, but mainly those who have lost their traditional organisations and self-confidence and are looking instead for saviours.

The recent triumph of the Right in Austria shows this process going one step further. This has happened shortly after some other liberal and Left commentators argued that the recent defeat of the far right Freedom Party’s presidential candidate in Austria, and the electoral victories over Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen show that right populism is being contained in Western Europe at least.

However, a section of Austria’s leading traditional conservative People’s Party, led by Sebastian Kurz, decided it would break the longstanding Peoples Party/Social Democrat Party coalition and push politics to the Right. Kurz successfully captured the Peoples Party leadership. After the recent general general election he led the party into a new government coalition, this time with the Freedom Party.

Far from undermining neo-liberalism, Kurz intends to use this coalition to mount a stepped up neo-liberal offensive. This is also the trajectory of the real leaders of the Brexit and of Trump and his backers.

This article by Benjamin Opratko describes what has happened in Austria.

3. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, OFFICIAL AND DISSIDENT COMMUNISM

AND A POLITICS BASED ON EMANCIPATION, LIBERATION AND SELF DETERMINATION

Contents of part 3

a. The limits placed on social democracy during a crisis of global capitalism

b. From revolutionary democratic social democracy to existing state-accommodating reformist social democracy

c. A further shift in the meaning of social democracy; the brief emergence of an alternative revolutionary democratic communism; and the descent to state-backed official communism and dissident communism

d. Social democracy and official communism morph into social neo-liberalism

e. From social liberalism to populism

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a. The limits placed on social democracy during a crisis of global capitalism

i. We are living through a period of unprecedented global crisis – political, economic, social, and cultural. This means that ideas will be tested continuously. A democratic party based on the exploited and oppressed will have people from a whole number of tendencies – communist (as outlined in 2.f.iii), republican socialist, social democratic, movementist, green socialist, socialist feminist, environmental, etc. Continue reading “A CRITIQUE OF JEREMY CORBYN AND BRITISH LEFT SOCIAL DEMOCRACY, Part 3”

Since the Brexit vote, the Tories, under Theresa May’s leadership, have been moving away from the recently shared politics of the majority of the British ruling class and mainstream British political parties. A central feature of these politics was based upon the globalised neo-liberal economics pushed by Margaret Thatcher, in the interests of a turbo-charged City of London. The City had really taken off after Nigel Lawson’s ‘Big Bang’ deregulation in 1983. Following New Labour’s 1996 election victory, they adopted the same unquestioning pro-City path. This was shown when Chancellor Gordon Brown abolished the few remaining government controls over the City’s operations. Under Tony Blair, Butskellism gave way to Blatcherism.Continue reading “WHICH WAY NOW – ‘BREXIT’ OR ‘EX-BRIT’?”

“An even greater leap into fantasy land is the belief that Brexit will provide a progressive example to other member states wanting to break away from the EU…. The first and unfortunately well-known non-UK person to celebrate Brexit was none other than the Right populist US Presidential hopeful, Donald Trump. With typical crassness he chose his new golf course at Turnberry in Scotland to declare his solidarity with Brexit… Another presidential hopeful, Marine Le Pen, of the French Far Right National Front, was the first significant European politician to proclaim her solidarity with Brexit.Continue reading “FROM FARAGE’S BREXIT TO TRUMP’S “BREXIT PLUS, PLUS, PLUS”, AND ON TO ‘MADAME FREXIT’?”

Steve Freeman of the Republican Socialist Alliance, who stood as a socialist republican and anti-Unionist candidate in Bermondsey in the General Election, makes his political assessment of the Corbyn campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party.

JEREMY CORBYN AND THE RE-EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

The fall and rise of Social Democracy and the re-division of the left

The incredible and unbelievable arrival of the movement to elect Jeremy Corbyn MP to be leader of the Labour Party has taken all the left by surprise. It is a happy shock and one to welcome. Its impact is yet to become clear but no doubt it will have a significant impact on socialist movement. The Corbyn movement should not be seen as an isolated event but as part of a chain of events which reflect the course of the class struggle.Continue reading “JEREMY CORBYN AND THE RE-EMERGENCE OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY”

The writer and political commentator, Gerry Hassan, has written the following letter to “Scotland’s New Radicals”, including the Radical Independence Campaign.Gerry raises some pertinent questions, so we asked him if we could repost his article. Gerry agreed. We hope to post a reply quite soon.

Gerry Hassan

Radical Scotland’s re-emergence and re-invigoration around the independence referendum has been one of the most welcome and positive occurrences for many years in Scottish politics.

The RCN received the unanimous backing of the Edinburgh branch of RIC to ask the RIC National Steering Committee to organise a session at the second national RIC conference on November 23rd in Glasgow, entitled ‘The break-up of the UK – the case for ‘internationalism from below’’. This was then unanimously agreed by the Steering Committee, subject to availability of speakers and any modifications required by the overall conference programme. In the event, the session was renamed ‘After the UK: the future for 4 nations’.

The initial choice of speaker for Ireland was agreed to be Bernadette McAliskey, and for Wales, Leanne Wood, a republican and the president of Plaid Cymru. Leanne initially indicated her interest, but later had to give her apologies because the conference clashed with a Plaid Cymru event, which also meant that a substitute speaker could not be arranged. Steve Freeman of the Republican Socialist Alliance was also proposed as a speaker for England, and after the organisers’ consideration this was also agreed. The organisers were left to arrange a speaker for Scotland. In the meantime, Mary McGregor (RCN and Dundee RIC) was proposed to chair the session. Later the organisers came back and, in the interest of preserving gender balance, transferred Mary to speak on Scotland. Tony Kenny, a republican and former SNP member and council candidate was asked to chair the meeting instead.

Below we provide a video link which shows Bernadette’s contribution to this session. After this we provide both videos and the full texts of Steve Freeman’s and Mary McGregor’s contributions (which was slightly curtailed because of time considerations).

This is followed by a reply to David Torrance’s report of the conference in The Herald.